Do you always spell your name "sean"? I just noticed that ILuvÉire spelled it with a síneadh fada but you didn't. And in case you're interested, sean means old, séan means deny or knowledge, and seán is your name. It's a great example of the importance of síntí fada in Irish.

My impression has always been that there are two variants: Séan (anglicised "Shane") and Seán (anglicised "Shaun"). I'm not sure what the history is here--whether Séan might be related to Séanna or if this is an instance of the same sort of shift seen in Míchéal > Mícheál, oiléan > oileán, etc. At any rate, because of the reference to Shaun of the Dead, I've always assumed our Sean is a Seán rather than a Séan.

As for the Stenson books, they've come highly recommended to me but I've never used them myself. I'm curious; what is it you didn't like about them, a Sheáin?

Haha, yeah, my name is officially spelt "Sean", and that without the fada it means "old", but I'm asking people to spell it as "Seán", which is pronounced the same as my name. Does anyone know if it is possible to officially have diacritics in your name here in the USA? I've seen people with acute accents and the like, but I don't know if they just spelt it that way because they liked it, or if that was the official way to spell it. If you can, I'm totally changing my name to Seán. (By official I mean that was put on your birth certificate, and what goes on credit cards and whatnot ) And good job noticing the reference, not many people do. Do you love that movie also?

I don't really like the layout and exercises of those books, and that they don't come with audio, which is required when learning to speak Irish.

My impression has always been that there are two variants: Séan (anglicised "Shane") and Seán (anglicised "Shaun").

I thought that Shane came from the Ulster pronunciation of Seán, because Séan is not a given Irish name.

And as for audio when learning, I was in the Gaeltacht for three weeks, and the priest there learned his Irish from a book without audio in South Africa, so múintir na háite haven't a clue what he says!

I've been writing Seán for his name for a while, it's just become a habit. And I'm nearly 100% sure you can have accents on your birth certificate, my good friend Asanté has the accent on her passport. Then again, she is from South Africa, so maybe they only allow it on non native names?

I've a question about the vocative case, is it used with foreign names? Would I be "a Thyler" (or summat like that) or just "a Tyler."

ILuvEire wrote:I've been writing Seán for his name for a while, it's just become a habit. And I'm nearly 100% sure you can have accents on your birth certificate, my good friend Asanté has the accent on her passport. Then again, she is from South Africa, so maybe they only allow it on non native names?

It's quite a pain for Irish people with síntí fada on their names to go abroad to countries that normally don't have síntí fada! As far as I know, when filling out those forms for going to America, you do not put in accents.

ILuvÉire wrote:I've a question about the vocative case, is it used with foreign names? Would I be "a Thyler" (or summat like that) or just "a Tyler."

I don't think there is an Irish spelling or pronunciation of Tyler, so "a tyler" looks good to me. Probably pronunced "a thyler". Since you are into writing síntí fada now, you do know that ILuvÉire also has a síneadh fada?

linguoboy wrote:

Declan wrote:I thought that Shane came from the Ulster pronunciation of Seán, because Séan is not a given Irish name.